Another Scoop Of Bullshit, With Sprinkles On Top

 h/t Granite Grok

Apparently, unable to help themselves, and tickling the confirmation bias of every "masks don't work" retard on the planet, some Norwegian numbnuts' have burped out another pointless non-study "study", full of more holes than an entire warehouse of Jarlsberg cheese. 

If you're going to consume something, we recommend
this choice unhesitatingly over what's in the header pic.

Notable is their forthrightness in telling you, right in black-and-white, what a load of crap they've excreted.

For bonus points, they waited until 2022 to do this, after COVID had transmogrified worldwide to, at worst, a bad flu, and normally, a 2-3 day cold. Wherein people who actually had it couldn't even tell it was anything to worry about. Genius, right there.

The parts of the self-reported survey no one reads down to that matter:

Additionally, there may be other factors that could confound the relationship between face  mask use and study outcomes, such as participants in high-risk professions or with risk factors for severe COVID-19. Both groups may be more or less prone to wear face masks, while also  observing different social distancing practices than the average population. We also cannot  rule reverse causality, in which those testing positive for COVID-19 were more prone to wear  masks afterwards in order to protect others. Finally, there could be an association between the  inclination to test and the propensity to wear a face mask.

So many of their "frequent" users could have been health care workers in close proximity to active COVID patients. Which screws the pooch decisively, all by itself. They performed no control for this. Then they mention the other two obvious reasons what they think they found is hogwash, so their imaginary "correlation" is so much worthless bullshit. Which they even told people from the outset in their intro summary:

We believe the observed increased incidence of infection associated with wearing a face mask is likely due to unobservable and hence nonadjustable differences between those wearing and not wearing a mask. Observational studies reporting on the relationship between face mask use and risk of respiratory infections should be interpreted cautiously, and more randomized trials are needed.

Thus, any similarity between what they claim to have found, and actual truth, is as likely due to witchcraft, or heavy use of psychedelic drugs while correlating their so-called "data". Monkeys throwing darts at a board would be more reliable. 

Well-played, weasel-word maestros.

And how many participants reported wearing a face mask all the time?

Of the participants, 852 (26.6%) reported using a face mask at least 75% of the time when near others outside their home, 861 (26.8%) reported using a face mask between 25% and 75% of the time, and 1,495 (46.6%) reported using a face mask less than 25% of the time.

So the answer to the question of who wore a face mask all the time is 0%.

They even told people this openly:

Owing to few responses for some of the categories, in our analysis we combined the response categories into: Always/Almost always; Often / Sometimes; and Almost never/Never. This was prespecified in the protocol.

Therefore, they combined that 0% with the 26.6% who wore a mask maybe 75% of the time when near others outside their home.

That's like combining steak and bullshit in equal proportions to make a meatloaf. Consume at your own risk.

Not studied: how many of them had close contact inside their home with friends and family who had COVID, and would likely have transmitted it to them, when nobody in the equation was wearing anything.

The greater point, as usual, is how many of those wearing masks were in proximity to those wearing none, when the whole point of any masking policy involving simple masks is that other people wear them to protect you, not the other way around.

They knew this too, yet continue to test seatbelts to see if they prevent car accidents, and test parachutes to see if they prevent plane crashes, in true anti-scientific jackhole bassackwards fashion.

With two university professors, a master's graduate, and a Ph.D. conducting this "research". Which is as reliable as a mall survey. And you wonder why college, worldwide, is simply shit?

They conclude by summarizing yet again all the ways their "research" is full of shit:

Our findings may be explained by several factors. A major limitation of our study is the non- randomized, cross-sectional study design. It may be that mask wearers were more prone to wear masks to protect others from their own infection. This reverse causality may explain the positive association between risk of infection and mask usage, and could be supported by the finding that participants reporting to wear masks also were more likely to test themselves for COVID-19. Furthermore, there may be other behavioral differences related to perception of  risk [26] or occupation that we did not observe, that are linked to the likelihood of wearing masks [27] or to the likelihood of being tested for COVID-19 when symptomatic. There is also the possibility that mask wearers feel somewhat protected and thus change their behaviors to not observe social distancing, so that any benefit of masking is offset by increased exposure. Lastly, our main outcome was based on self-report, which is also a possible source of bias.

Therefore, any similarity between what they published, and useful information is purely coincidental. Which makes you wonder WhyTF they even bothered to do it, other than to justify their rent checks, and to not be prosecuted for grant fraud, let alone skin-wasting and oxygen theft.

These witless wonders couldn't find their own asses with both hands, a map, and a rear-view mirror. But grant money was at stake, so more shit chowder for the Bubbas is once again on the menu.

And at the end, this pearl:

Recommendations to wear face masks in the community are largely informed by low certainty evidence from observational studies.

No shit, Sherlock.

IOW, TPTB, being even stupider than these educated idiots, made foolish decisions to implement jackassical policies which had no scientific basis, and no possibility of working, because 

a) they wanted to be seen "doing something", even if it was bag-of-hammers-stupid, with a 0% chance of success, like we told you from the outset, and

b) because the sort of people who become TPTB self-abuse themselves to fantasies of telling everyone else what to do, for their own good, no matter how stupid, pointless, and ill-informed those instructions are.

Short answer: in any crisis, ignore any so-called leaders who have no actual bona fides qualifications, any alleged "experts" they call on, and damned near anything they tell you to do that sounds even remotely suspect. And whenever possible, kill both categories before they can breed, for the good of the species.

Total number of "studies" that actually studied mask-wearing efficacy, since about EVER: still only one, AFAIK.

More grant money set on fire, and then flushed down the toilet.

Universities should pay professors to not inflict this sort of bullshit on the people, and dock them salary commensurate with any grant stipends they receive which plop this kind of pure bullshit in public. It's the only way they'll learn to stop doing it, short of kicking them in the dick 100 times a day for a week.

For the record, I'm in favor of that too.

But little steps, right?

Deja Poo

 h/t Eatgrueldog

deja poo: n. 1. The feeling you've seen this shit before

GOPe Bonus points for blaming the voters for this.

Double GOPe Bonus points if you also blame Trump and those pesky MAGA voters.

And "single-issue abortion votes"?

Every GOP governor that signed an abortion ban was re-elected. Suck on that, and stop gaslighting yourselves.

"Forget It, Jake. They're ChinaClowns..."

 h/t Sal

Math is magically easier when you know the answer before you do the work.

Your last free election was in 2016.
It pissed off TPTB so much, they'll never let that kind of thing
happen ever again, if they can help it.

Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe this,
 or did they just get dropped on their head a lot as an infant?
#Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect #Fucktard

And Atlanta. Philadelphia. Detroit. Phoenix. Las Vegas. Wisconsin. I'll wait...
Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A Failure Of Imagination. And Of Common Sense.

h/t Blue Collar Prepping



Plague Doctor: Roll +10 Health Points during Contagion.

First, go read this post.
No, really, go. Read.
All of it.
Then come back.

___________________

All done?

I have no problem with the Dr.'s C.V. and bona fides.
She has quite the resume for dealing with some aspects of coronavirus, and related questions about the burgeoning Kung Flu pandemic. And some good, solid, useful information on several aspects.

But she's guilty of some rather important and significant misstatements.
I do not call them lies of omission, because I can't ascribe motivation and intent to what she wrote.

Much of it is correct, as far as it goes.
But some key points are rather woefully lacking in Reality.

¶ Nine:

"The government is currently screening people coming off of international flights from known risk zones, or coming across the border, and then diverting the people who need it to medical facilities that can handle it."

1) The fact that they're doing point-of-care one-time testing, on a disease that incubates for 2-14 days, and perhaps as many as 24 or 28, guarantees the spread of asymptomatic virus carriers into the country, to propagate it hither and yon widespread in a few days, to a couple of weeks. This is the bio-defense version of putting the entire defensive team on the line of scrimmage, and then looking shocked and dismayed when the other team passes over their heads for 3000 yards, and beats you 210-0. Your tax dollars at work.

Sorry Doc, I'm not feeling very de-stressed, fearless, or anxiety-free yet. Maybe you need to go back for some post-doc work on bedside manner and common sense. Just saying.

2) The natural consequence of #1, above is that in short order, there will be no more medical facilities that "can handle it". We've covered this here. The internet moves fast; try and keep up.

¶ Ten:

"Yes, you should go out and replace basic supplies you’re out of, plus a little extra - not because society is about to break down, but because you might be stuck in the house for a week feeling like absolute trash and too bombed on cold medication to drive or operate anything more complex than a can opener and a microwave."

3) Sorry, but after #2 becomes reality, "a week" of supplies isn't going to cut it. And once health care goes down in a pandemic, FFS, society is, in fact, in the process of breaking down.
And then people won't risk going to work, because they don't want to get sick. And/or the CDC closes things down, like they've already said they will. Public facilities, schools, businesses. But I'm sure the police, fire department, EMS, water, power, gas, telephone service, radio, TV, trash collection, and whatever else you imagine, will be magically unaffected by this, because no one could possibly decide that staying home, healthy, with their families was more important than keeping your fantasies about how society will behave alive amidst a crisis unprecedented in a century or more. Your crystal ball is a bit hazy, isn't it?

¶ Eleven

"In extreme situations, schools or workplaces may close under the guidance of local government or management - think snow days."

4) Um, no. Think snow months. Plural. If TPTB close schools and businesses, over a disease that can incubate for two weeks, perhaps a month, no one's going to call off a day or three. They're going to call it off until a month after the last recorded case. Like you do if you got your medical diploma from someplace other than online. Otherwise, you're just ringing the dinner bell for serial waves of pandemic, and guaranteeing re-infection by some, which at last report, has a wee tendency to cause sudden cardiac arrest and death.
Now I'm really not feeling fearless and anxiety-free at all. Are you sure you're a real doctor?

5) And snow months means that "a week" of extra supplies, once again, isn't going to cut it. So maybe start talking about two, three, or six months. Maybe all year. Which, as people watch their 401Ks melt down daily, may bring on even more anxiety among the really susceptible-to-this-virus retirees. Don'tcha think???

¶ Twelve

"Again, this is not Hollywood-style “civil unrest” with people running, screaming, and looting while armed officers break up any groups larger than three..."

6) Oh, really??
Ever been to Chicagostan? Baltimoronia? Detroitistan? District of Criminals? St. Louis? Philly? Newark? South Central L.A.? Oakland? Anywhere, really.
I mean, FFS, Chicago has more shooting casualties every year than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ever did, even at the heights of those conflicts (a truth which really pisses OIF/OEF vets off royally when I point that out), and the people there don't even have Interceptor vests, MRAPs, M-4 rifles, close air support, or any supporting fires, most days.

Now, doc, have you ever been there (for any value of there) when they're pissed off?
Like when the market's closed.
Not the stock market; I mean the supermarket. Or supermarkets, plural.

Or when their EBT cards haven't been reloaded, because non-essential employees (and a lot of more essential ones) aren't coming to work to do that?
Didja figure they'd quietly starve in silence?
Or do you think they might go "shopping", with bricks, torches, and machetes?

What about when the police are running things at 1/2 or 1/3 staff?
How do you see civil unrest under those conditions, doc? Have we gotten maybe just a wee bit out of your depth of expertise here? Just asking. Nothing personal.

I've been in two, count 'em, two, city-wide riots. And those were little ones, compared to what we'd see in a months-long pandemic with societal degradation. Both of them affected Hollywood directly, BTW. So maybe a bit less pooh-poohing, and a little more shut-up-and-give-your-eyes-and-ears-a-chance-when-you-don't-know-WTF-you're-talking-about, if you catch my drift.


This will never actually happen. It is unpossible in America.
I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.

¶ Thirteen

" Not surprisingly, mortality has been much higher at the epicenter of the outbreak, where things happened very fast and new patients were met with already-exhausted healthcare resources. Remember that proper medical management, even if there’s no cure, is a significant factor in reducing the death toll. Medical centers and public health workers here in the U.S. are doing quite a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that our resources are ready to meet the challenge, which is an advantage that the first round of patients in Wuhan didn’t have."

7) Got it.
American health care is first rate.
We can handle a major crisis.
We've got this.
You'll perhaps understand if I mention we've been sold these same Magic Beans at least once before. {Hint: It didn't work out well for the city involved. Or the hospital. Or the employees there. Definitely not for Patient Zero. Or, really...anyone. Maybe they didn't cover this in your anxiety-reducing and fear-allaying curriculum. Kind of a big hole in the course work, i'n'it?}

Now, I'm a fair guy. Most of the basic information, on point, from the good Dr. regarding the actual virus is good stuff.
So you should, indeed, still RTWT.
Glean the nuggets of actual good information out of it. There are a number of them there.

But be aware that when most people get beyond their expertise, they run neck-deep into spurious bullshit, and trip over their Confirmation Bias that "Things have never gotten SHTF bad, so they won't this time, either." Good for your blood pressure, yes, but not so good when you might be re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and listening to the orchestra entertain the passengers milling about in life preservers on the Boat Deck. Especially not when you should have been ripping doors off their hinges and building rafts.

Maybe everything will be magical unicorns pooping strawberry-scented welfare checks and rubies the size of charcoal briquettes.
Or maybe things are going to get a lot worse, and we've only begun the initial tipover on that rollercoaster, with the bottom of things quite a long scary way down.

You get one chance to prepare ahead for Bad Times.
That ends once they happen.

Now, you tell me, would you rather be over-prepared, or under-prepared?
This exam will be graded pass/fail.

Aaugh! Shocking.

h/t Herschel

(RALLYTOWN, VA) Virginia’s Senate Judiciary Committee passed several gun control bills Monday morning. 

Those bills tackle everything from universal background checks (S. B. 70- Background Checks), one gun a month limit, (S.B. 69- One-Gun-a-Month Limit), red flag laws, firearms and ammunition to be controlled by localities (S.B. 35- Local Authority), as well as firearms being restricted at public events.

Waitwaitwait...I thought there was just a wildly successful 2A rally...?
Just ten days ago.
In the same place these bills passed.
Everyone was talking about it.
Gosh, it's almost as if that had absolutely zero effect on anything in the real world.

O, if only someone - anyone - had warned them of that.

Meanwhile, it's a month later in 2020.
So, how many VA citizens have lobbied their own sheriffs, and used that time since New Year's Day to form citizen reserves to halt illegal weapons confiscation efforts, and fight and/or block all implementation of these unconstitutional laws in the Commonwealth, both legally and physically?

Would that too be...zero?

Hmmm.

Why could that be?

Keep having Gun Fan Woodstocks, and bravely protesting the War On Guns.
That will totally work.
Like it did in the '60s.

Explanations of how that happens are invited in Comments.
Butthurt and bile will either be cheerfully mocked, or rapidly obliterated into the ether of electrons, solely at our own amusement.

They would not listen, they're not listening still.

Perhaps they never will.

Anybody who's met IRL with so much as one other new person, in VA or their own state, since Gun Woodstock, to actually organize anything substantial, rather than imaginary, gets a pass on the past month's pop quiz.

The final exam will be graded pass/fail, and far more strictly.

Oops. Another Reality Check.

h/t 19th Ward Chicago

We had heard elsewhere on good authority that the NRA-MIA event this week in VA was a raging success.
Apparently, someone forgot to tell that to the VA Senate.

"Virginia Democrats took an important step toward passing several gun control bills they have prioritized during this year's General Assembly session.

The majority-Democrat state Senate passed legislation that would restrict monthly gun purchases, expand background checks on firearms, and allow localities to ban guns in certain designated areas.

Senate Bill 69 amends Virginia law to restrict citizens' ability to purchase more than one handgun per month, Senate Bill 70 requires mandatory background checks for all private sales of guns, and Senate Bill 35 requires localities to ban guns at public events."

So, it seems all the NRA accomplished was to get one bill set aside in one house, while three more were rammed home in the other. And these were the sensible, non-gun-waving pro-2A people, who simply showed up to testify to a legislature that is tilted the other way.

If this is a war, fight it like a war. Holding a parade on your enemy's quarterdeck isn't going to get you anything you want, but it'll get you a lot of what you don't want. Oh, and in about 97 ways, you're not ready for a war yet. So maybe start working on that first.

And if it's not quite a war yet, you've damned sure got better things to do than grabbing your crotch and waving your shortcomings in the enemy's face. So maybe start working on doing operations-other-than-war a helluva lot better too.

Which leaves no time for childish tantrums. Stop playing in the street, pull your heads out of your asses, and start doing serious things in a serious way, like this was serious business, and not a grade school food fight.

We have it on good authority that in a war, second place is a body bag.

Economics 101 For The "Legalize Drugs" Crowd

h/t to Kenny @ Knuckledraggin' blog

Write this on your hands, kids:
When we're right about something, and we've pointed it out, in depth and detail, ten times over, arguing against it is a waste of electrons.
Stop beating your dead horse; it's never going to rise and carry you to victory.

Illegal pot sales outpace legal cannabis in California

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s marijuana industry is undergoing some severe growing pains -- and it’s much bigger than just licensing permits.  

Nearly two years after recreational marijuana became legal in California, the black market is still much bigger than legal sales of marijuana. 

At All About Wellness, a Sacramento pot shop, business is thriving. In fact, owner Phil Blurton is planning to expand into a bigger building next month. But, he’s also worried about his illegal competitor(s) who don’t pay taxes. 

“Our city license now is $20,000 a year,” Blurton said. “The state license is $96,000. Then we pay 8.75% sales tax to the state." 

Blurton said he also pays an additional 4% cannabis tax to the city, on top of an additional 15% tax to the state, “which is making the cost of our product so expensive the black market is booming now.” 

It's booming to the tune of $8.7 billion in illegal sales this year. That’s more than double the legal market."

Waitwaitwait.

Legalizing it was supposed to "drive the cartels out of business" and lead to a Utopia where the government collects mountains of cash from pot farms fertilized by flying unicorns shitting strawberry-scented piles of cash.

And, Holy Obvious, Batman, who knew that criminals, by definition, don't obey the laws???
(Oh, besides every swinging Richard - by the thousands - that told you, going back decades, that legalization as a "solution", was a giant steaming mound of fresh hot horseshit?)

So how's it working out day to day, in Reality?:

(CHICO, CA) — The Special Enforcement Unit of the Butte County Sheriff’s Office made 12 arrests Monday after discovering $164,200 found stashed in a vehicle during a traffic stop on Nov. 6. 

The traffic stop spurred a search warrant on properties along Bonnie Meadow Lane in Brush Creek, said a press release issued Thursday by the Sheriff’s Office. 

According to the release, deputies believe the three arrested during the traffic stop were en route to buy a large amount of pot while armed. 

When serving the warrant, multiple men ran into the woods but deputies detained 15 people and arrested 12, all from Mexico. 

Detectives think the operation was being run by a Mexican drug trafficking organization. They destroyed 1,204 live marijuana plants, collected 278.91 pounds of processed marijuana bud, 457.32 pounds of marijuana bud on stem and 184.02 pounds of marijuana shake.
The Special Enforcement Unit also located and collected two illegal AR-15 rifles with high capacity magazines, one of which was a short barreled rifle, one AK-47 with a high capacity magazine, three pistols and ballistic rifle rated body armor. Detectives seized $14,380 in U.S. currency.

Roberto Estrada, 38, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a residence for drug sales, employing a minor under the age of 21 to sell marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Nestor Ortiz, 32, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a residence for drug sales, cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Cristobal Briseno, 19, was arrested on suspicion of cultivating marijuana and possessing marijuana for sale.

RTWT

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait.

Legalization was going to make the stupid, futile, impossible, nasty, evil, mean, rotten, unwinnable War Mutually Beneficial Slap Fight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage go away forever and ever, and peace would guard the planets, in the dawning of the new Legalized Pot Age Of Aquarius.

We've been assured this would happen in 5000% percent of cases. Apparently neither the Mexican drug cartels, nor the Butte County Sheriff's Office, got that memo.
How...curious and surprising. Not.

WTF?

It's almost like bad ideas are always bad ideas, and criminals are going to criminal.
This was just one raid, on one day, in just one county in Califrutopia.

And those were just ordinary, decent, hard-working illegal aliens, growing the pot that Americans won't grow, right?

WHO was it that said “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."
Because I forget sometimes.

And now, a word from the sponsor of this sort of fairytale happy horseshit:

Stop me if you've heard this one...

Cue the "If only we paid the government MOAR TAXES so they could raise or manufacture and give all drugs away free for anyone, free for the asking, forever, by the metric fuckton...!" Argument, in 3, 2, ...

So, tell me, how's that worked out with food?
Have we somehow won the War On Poverty with that?
Or do we just have nearly half the country addicted to being shiftless, fat, lazy, welfare-sucking piggies at government's trough?

(Hint: Check out People Of Wal-Mart and get back to us. I'll wait.)

Asking for the 50% of the country still pulling that wagon for Uncle.
So far.

Spare me the touchy-feely let's-buy-the-world-a-Coke 1960s hippy Left-wing party-line bullshit.
When your Utopia turns to a pile of shit after 15 seconds in the real world, your map is not the terrain. And never was.

And illegal drugs will ALWAYS outsell and underprice the government competition, even if drug cartels have to give them away and pay you to take them, just to capture market share and drive the competition out of business. (They can -and will - always jack the prices once they have a monopoly, and you're hooked. Google "rich heroin addicts", and get back to us.)

It's almost like they might have paid off some of the government @$$holes who enacted this nonsense in the first place (who now get money for and from both sides of the current farce),  to simultaneously make it fail, and yet end any enforcement on their otherwise-contraband, as if they were running a criminal fucking business where the only rule is "Succeed."

("Drug cartels pay off government shitweasels? That's crazy talk, Aesop." said no one ever.)

Politics is the continuation of war by other means.
The Enemy ALWAYS gets a vote.

And They Still Can't Figure Out Why "A" Led To "B"

Sultan Knish connects the dots:

Los Angeles had doubled its homeless budget to $450 million. Despite that its homeless population had only dropped to 39,826, a reduction of only 256 people. The only surprise in those statistics is that the population dropped at all. Homeless spending has the notorious effect of increasing homeless populations rather than diminishing them as vagrants swarm in and agencies inflate their numbers.

But while doubling its homeless budget didn’t significantly diminish the homeless population in Los Angeles, it did have another spectacular statistical effect on the wellbeing of city residents.

LAPD statistics showed that homeless crime actually increased by nearly 50%, jumping from 5,976 crime reports of homeless perpetrators in most of 2017 to 8,906 crime reports in most of 2018.

RTWT.

When they start handing them PR-24 shampoos and letting them drink from a firehose, instead of giving them motel vouchers and turkey dinners, they'll solve their homeless problem.

When you feed pigeons, you get a lot more of two things:
More pigeons.
More pigeon shit.

Put another way:
If we simply locked those 40,000 deranged whackjobs up for life, like we used to do, we could cut crimes in just L.A. by 10,000 crimes/year, forever.
(And that's just the ones that someone bothered to drop by the police station and report.)

Either the leadership of L.A. figures this one out, or people are going to stop dialing 9-1-1, and start cleaning up the streets with 3-5-7.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and right now, there's an absolute dearth of any enforcing the law against the homeless wastrels and refuse with legs infesting major cities.
The cops can't stand the smell, and because they're crazy, the D.A. and city attorneys won't prosecute, because defense counsel will just plead insanity, and they'll walk, which makes D.A.'s records look bad. (And to hell with protecting the taxpaying citizenry, which never enters into the calculus of enforcement or prosecution. Ever.)

There are limits to what folks will tolerate, and when someone decides randomly shooting batshit crazy homeless people (which, anecdotally, is 95% of them) is a better, more efficient, and more permanent solution than letting government deal with them, it's going to become a thing. Mark my words.

And then the money the city wasted pampering them will be diverted to Potter's Field, to bury them.
A few million BTUs of gas, and a plastic bag to bury them will be a lot cheaper than $450M/yr.
With a 0% recidivism rate. (Shame about all those homeless advocacy make-work SJW jobs.)

This prospect will make politicians itchy, because once The People figure out that most problems can be solved with 150 grains or so of copper-jacketed lead, they tend to reach for that solution for a lot of other problems as well.

Like the problem of the politicians who created and fed that problem to begin with.

And yes, these are macabre prospects to be discussing on December 24th.

Merry Christmas.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One...

h/t Remus

From Traditional Right

One of the cardinal principles of 4GW is that before you ever set foot on the battlefield you should already be tilting the battlefield in your favor.  Don’t fight the kind of battle the enemy wants in the place that the enemy wants to do so. So my first piece of (probably unheeded) advice would be to stop having rallies in the first place, at least of the kind that are likely to degenerate into brawls with antifa and BLM. 

The fact of the matter is that right-wing activism always fails.  You’re not going to be able to steal a page from their playbook and turn the Left’s game against them.  This is because the Right does not have the institutional support of the politicians, bureaucracies, and other elements of the state apparatus. As a result, antifa can get away with beating you because the police will arrest you when you fight back.  In fact, the police may openly side with the antifas, as they did in Charlottesville.  Is it fair? Of course not. But life isn’t fair, so get a helmet.  Earlier this year, I thought there might be a chance that the legal climate for legitimate self-defence against antifas might be changing, but I have since revised that opinion in the negative direction. So the question is, why show up armed with sticks and shields if you’re not going to be allowed to use them without getting a criminal record?  Why give unsympathetic news media the opportunity to tar you dishonestly to millions of viewers across the country?  There are other means by which antifa and BLM can be countered...

RTWT.

I'm hoping that if only a few hundred people keep intelligently telling Team Fucktard point by blistering point why they should stay home and try other methods, it will eventually penetrate their left-bell-curve IQs and bulletproof skulls that we're saying this because it's true, and not just to piss off the stupid people.

Tally up how many of the points I made here, here, here, and here you can find.
Almost as if I knew WTF I was talking about.

GMTA.

Let The Games Begin

And now, only three days after the WHO report referred to two posts ago, the number of contacts in Congo has jumped from 129 to 400, per AP.

Scroll back and see where I put this under "possible worst case".

It's probably safe, at this point, to drop it down another notch on the scale.
And to check sales on canned goods. Really.

Because WHO, and African kakistocracy are back on the case. (What could possibly go wrong?) As if Inspector Clouseau had called the Keystone Kops for back-up.

Now all we need is one Ebola-infected traveler to hit the US, then we can get the CDC in on the hijinks, and it's a Saturday matinee.

And if it gets from the northern border of BFCongo to the capitol, Kinshasa, and its 10,000,000 people with rates of 60% literacy, and the same lack of health care, running water, or flush toilets, in a country that borders on nine other underdeveloped and poor countries, a population already ravaged by AIDS, malaria, and dozens of other diseases, and then things'll get mighty interesting.

The only good news is there's a promising experimental vaccine, which they might be able to get there, and the world can use a few thousand Congolese villagers as human testing guinea pigs. If, if, IF it turns out to work, that would be great news. If not, well...

We've already seen what the next 12 or so doublings look like. Pray we don't go there again.
Best wishes, and sleep tight.